Nearing Midnight

The new Socialist representative for Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has become a gift from heaven to conservative bloggers. She recently co-authored what is being called “The Green New Deal (GND).” When the document came out, it was widely praised by the mainstream media and a host of Democratic leaders.

This plan is bold in calling for a massive transformation of our society, but the goals and timeline are absolutely insane. There is no way they could be implemented with our current technology and resources.

Within 10 years the GND calls for us to move America to 100% clean and renewable energy and decommission every nuclear plant. Other widely derided lines included a call for “high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary”; expanding public transit “with goals to replace every combustion-engine vehicle”; “economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work”; and a goal to “fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes.”

I’m just stunned that such an idiotic plan could have been issued by a member of congress. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez should be sitting in a corner wearing a dunce hat for producing a document with such faulty math. The starting cost would have been at least $30 trillion. Economists are concerned that we just passed $22 trillion for our national debt, so it would be pure folly to have a plan that calls for about doubling this number.

My favorite part is the proposal to give free money to people “unwilling to work.” The Norwegian government just ended a program that gave out cash to people for doing nothing. The trial program found that the free money didn’t make people more willing to work; it just made them happier.

Sen. Tom Cotton only sees red in the Green New Deal document. He blames the news media for engaging in a “Stalin-like” cover-up of the freshman New York congresswoman’s plan. Cotton, a Republican from my home state of Arkansas, said in a radio interview on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” that the document revealed a liberal ambition to “have the power and the control of those Americans’ lives to implement their radical vision for humanity.”

Cotton said it was “remarkable” how many Democratic presidential candidates “had leapt onto a proposal that was going to confiscate every privately owned vehicle in America within a decade, and ban air travel so we could all drive or ride around on high-speed light rail, supposedly powered by unicorn tears.”

When asked how she planned to pay for her massive program, AOC pointed out that large parts of the Federal budget operated from deficit spending. Her Green New Deal would be an investment that would eventually pay for itself. Steven Rattner, who was an adviser to the treasury department during the Obama administration, offered a rare gift of clear thinking on the calls for massive spending on social programs in a New York Times op-Ed:

“Medicare for all. The Green New Deal. Free college tuition. With each new entrant into the Democratic presidential sweepstakes comes a fresh cascade of ambitious social programs to entice and excite would-be supporters. The list of pay-fors, to use a bit of Washington jargon, grows more slowly. They’ll pay for this how again? Tax the rich; tax the rich – or take cover behind a convenient bit of progressive dogma: Don’t worry about the fiscal impact because America’s rising budget deficits and debt levels don’t much matter.

“That’s a scary drift of thought, and it should set off alarm bells for all Americans. Vast increases in debt will ultimately compromise Washington’s ability to maintain its current array of spending programs, let alone add new ones, and threaten our standard of living.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., made a brilliant political move by announcing he’s bringing the Green New Deal resolution to a vote. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass, one of the co-authors of the plan, said the vote was “nothing but an attempt to sabotage the movement we are building.” Markey doesn’t want a vote on his sprawling blueprint for the future because he knows voters would reject its massive cost.

It would be easy to say that the Green New Deal is just another example of how the world has become overrun with madness and ignorance. It is an exercise in buffoonery, but evil is the primary driving force. The Democrats don’t care if the math doesn’t work for their plan. They want the power it gives them. Any hint of doubt is smothered in deception and lies. By the time they’ve convinced the public to join their side, they’ve completely lost track of reality and will do the will of him who specializes in deception.

A neighbor teenager comes to visit us often. She and my wife are quite close. The 15-year-old calls us her “grandparents.” We have known her for years as a neighborhood child, but it is in just the past several years that she has discovered us as “grandparents.”

She has her eyes constantly fixed upon her device, just as most all teenagers.

When she came by the other day, she was distraught. Her mom had taken off several applications (or whatever they’re called) from her device. Also, ol’ Mom had removed Netflix. When asked why she was so down in the doldrums over this, she said that her mother took Netflix off because of the program called Lucifer.

I, of course, said before even thinking very far about the matter: “Good.”

I couldn’t see Miss Terri’s (I’ll call her Terri; not her real name) eyes, but Grandma said: “She just rolled her eyes.”

Terri said in a whiny, but cute, voice: “Why?…What’s wrong with it? Its a good show.”

She added, after giving the name of the character who played Lucifer, “He’s so handsome and good to everyone…”

Where to begin, or not to begin? That is the question as Shakespeare might have framed the dilemma.

How to begin framing the answer to the question by our genuinely non-comprehending Terri?…

We did our best to explain why ol’ Mom was doing the right thing by taking her daughter out of harm’s way. I tried to explain exactly who the real Lucifer is. That he is not a fictional character–he is in fact the being at the center of every problem, every evil thing faced by men, women, and children today.

Her mother has her in Sunday School and church, and she should know the whole story by now. She loves and trusts us, but I’m far from sure the explanation–and it was lengthy inconsideration of a teenager’s attention span–was accepted. You just can’t tell with them. The ability to truly connect is lost back there somewhere when we go into our middle to late 20s, I think.

The little session that afternoon did start me cogitating about what has happened in recent times. –What is, in fact, happening at an accelerated rate hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second.

Bottom line is that Lucifer the fallen one has injected humanity with his deluding, mesmerizing venom. We see the effects every day and every hour when our senses are subjected to news from around the world.

Again, I use the United States to analyze the tremendous influence this angelic rebel exerts upon the human condition. I do so because his effectiveness is most starkly pronounced, I think, by looking at what his devilish minions have been able to wreak upon a nation founded on godly principles.

Now, right off the proverbial bat, we see his nefarious prevarication infused into American society and culture.

He has the millennial generation of this nation thoroughly inculcated by the American media. Both news and entertainment branches of that institution we call media tell the young that America’s founding was exclusively by rich, white slave owners who wanted power to make themselves even richer. Our youth are likewise taught within our now-corrupted, public educational system–at every level, primary to post graduate– that America was wicked from its beginning and is now so wicked it needs changing completely. (Does that sound familiar?)

The most previous president told us that hope and change was the only way to make things right–to absolve America of her national sin. America’s sin? Simply having more than any other nation on earth. What was needed to rectify this? Redistribution of wealth so that–like in socialist nations–everyone had an equal share of the wealth.

Donald Trump’s election disrupted Obama and the entire globalist agenda from bringing the U.S. into a changed world order. Thus erupted the prodigious explosion of resistance to Trump’s efforts to “make America great again.” Remember how immediately there was–and continues to be–hatred by the political left for anyone who believes, thus espouses, that God, not man, must rule in order to bring about the Utopia the globalists elite say they desire to create. They fully intend to be the progenitors of a totally equitable world that needs no God. Ah…but they indeed have one. His name is Lucifer.

The most obvious manifestation that illustrates the leftist and one-world would-be masters want no deity to rule over them is the climate-changematter. The claim is that man has caused the destruction of the planet. It is man who must fix the things causing the destruction. These neither believe in a God who rules nor do they accept that rubric. Instead, the elite intend to force all to comply. America, under this president, will not comply with their global warming/climate change edicts, thus, again, the massive eruption of resistance and geopolitical, cultural and societal warfare. All fomented by–that’s right–“handsome” and “good” Lucifer, about whose evil intentions Terri’s mom has God-given discernment. (Thanks, again, mom.)

Another Luciferian manifestation that is fully in view is the delusion that murder in just the right way and for exactly the right reasons is a good thing. We who still maintain our moral equilibrium and sound minds are aghast as we hear a governor of a state (who is also a pediatric physician) wax eloquent on why it is acceptable and even preferable to take the life of a newborn. First there is wild, almost uncontrollable cheering when the New York state legislature is announced to have passed law legalizing abortion right up to the moment of birth and even beyond. Then those on the political left, affirmed by punditry on mainstream news and entertainment media, smile and are boastfully proud of that legitimization of murdering the most helpless and innocent among us.

As expressed in this column many times, I’m convinced we are witnessing things of prophetic portent which most born-again Christians do not take time to spiritually consider, thus cannot realize.

We are seeing Lucifer–Satan–totally delude the nation’s and world’s unregenerate populations. He has managed, as stated before, to infuse or inject humanity with his venom. This has produced–and is producing–the reprobate mindset as given by Paul the apostle in Romans chapter 1.

The plans of the globalists elite are on the fast track to bring about the new world order. This will be the platform from which the devil plans to launch his final fuhrer, Antichrist, into position of god of this world. He, Lucifer, will then indwell this man of sin and finally, he thinks, receive the worship he deserves. This self-aggrandizement has apparently been festering in his wicked thinking since God created man.

God, at the same time Lucifer’s plan is unfolding, is restraining evil. This is what the ruckus is all about. God the Holy Spirit is the “restrainer”of 2 Thessalonians 2. He is holding up Satan’s ability to saturate the planet with his venomous, deluding evil.

Now, to the “scenarios” as presented in the title of this commentary.

Resistance will grow. Trump’s plans to “make America great again”will likely only become more virulent, not diminish. The best that can be hoped for, in human terms, is for enough people of sound mind to be elected in order to prevent complete debauching of the sort that took place within the New York legislature as they approved of murder. Because the prophetic hour is very late, America will never be “great again,” in the sense we think of it as once being a great nation. And, God is the One who made it so to whatever degree it was indeed ever in that condition.

God the Holy Spirit will continue to restrain evil perpetrated by Lucifer and his minions, both demonic and human–thus to bring as many to salvation through belief in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ as will so respond to the Holy Spirit’s call.

America’s economy continues to be supernaturally prevented from collapsing, it is quite obvious to the spiritually attuned mind. With a national debt having just exceeded $22 trillion, the national fiscal condition is dire. Only God, Himself, can keep it propped to this level. This, sets the stage for an even more dire eventuation, in this writer’s view.

I have expressed that scenario many times here in this venue. I believe with Donald Trump being–miraculously, I believe–put into the office of president, the stage is set precisely as Jesus said it would be when He next catastrophically intervenes into this world. Again, I’m referring to the “days of Lot, days of Noah” prophecy found in Matthew 24:36-42 and Luke 17:26-30.

The moment Christ calls His Body–the Church–into His presence (Revelation 4:1), the Restrainer–God the Holy Spirit–will withdraw His restraining influence over the evil of this planet. This is because the Holy Spirit indwells every believer, and it is all born-again believers who are even now being used to help restrain the evil ol’ “good” and “handsome” Lucifer intends to foist upon every earth-dweller, those who will be instantly left behind to receive his evil–and, sadly–God’s wrath and judgment.

To you who are reading this, you don’t have to be one who will be left behind. Simply believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for your salvation. Confess with your mouth that God has raised Christ from death and that He is now your Redeemer. Do this, and you will be saved for all eternity, God’s Word promises. That is not just a scenario; that is unimpeachable truth!

I don’t think there was ever a time in American history where concern about inequality has been a greater concern in everyday life. The Civil War was probably the most consequent time of racial strife. Nearly half a million people died in that conflict, but the war was not primarily about slavery. Abraham Lincoln said that he would allow for slavery to continue if it would mean preserving the Union.

Racial hysteria has become so profound in our day, a major individual is caught up in a scandal at least once a week. It has become so dangerous in public life, celebrities need to be extra careful with every word they speak. The left has become so sensitive to racism, it’s almost impossible to avoid offending them.

One of the most dangerous things you can do is offer a compliment to someone of color. Chris Christie thinks that Cory Booker could be a threat to Trump’s re-election prospects. At an event hosted by The Washington Post, he offered praise for the New Jersey senator.

“Cory Booker: talented, smart, articulate, hope that he stays in this campaign to the roots that I saw him establish in New Jersey,” Christie said. “He was someone who was pro-voucher, he was pro-charter school, he was somebody who was tough on crime in the city of Newark. If he stays in that lane, and is the articulate, inspirational guy that he is, then I think he’s got a legitimate chance to be a serious potential problem for the president in the general election.”

The liberal media seized on his usage of the word “articulate,” saying it was a dog-whistle word. They said Christie made it clear he liked Booker, but his use of the word came across as a patronizing, backhanded compliment.

Speaking of Senator Cory Booker, he recently announced that he is running for the President of the United States. I think the only people that should vote for him are blacks and homosexuals, because that’s what seems to exclusively matter to him. During a confirmation hearing to replace the seat held by Brett Kavanaugh, Booker pressed Neomi Rao over her stances on LGBT and African-American issues. Here is a partial transcript of the exchange between Booker and Rao:

SEN. CORY BOOKER: Are gay relationships, in your opinion, immoral?

NEOMI RAO: Um, senator, I’m not sure the relevance of that.

BOOKER: I think it is relevant to your opinion. Do you think African-American relationships are immoral? Do you think gay relationships are immoral?

RAO: No. I do not.

BOOKER: You do not.

Do you believe they are a sin?

RAO: Senator, my personal views on any of these subjects are things I would put to one side, and I would faithfully follow precedent–

BOOKER: So you’re not willing to say here whether you believe it is sinful for two men to be married – you’re not willing to comment on that?

RAO: I’m sorry.

BOOKER: What, I didn’t hear your response.

RAO: My response is that these personal views are ones that I would put to one side. Whatever my personal views are on the subject, I would faithfully follow the precedent of the Supreme Court.

BOOKER: Have you ever had an LGBTQ law clerk?

RAO: I have not been a judge so I don’t have any law clerks.

BOOKER: I’m sorry, someone working for you?

RAO: Um, to be honest, I don’t know the sexual orientation of my staff. I take people as they come, irrespective of their race, ethnicity, sexual orientation.

It does matter that Booker made an absolute fool out of himself with his stupid questions. He will ask the next judicial nominee the same line of questions because of his racist evil nature.

Today, even an institution like the Oscar awards has to comply with a growing number of leftist social rules. “Inclusion, diversity, racial, ethnic and gender equality were all buzzwords for the Academy. Having a room full of white men is a sign of failure. Never mind that this year saw the largest class of women nominees.

Green Book made the cut, being about a world-class African-American pianist who is about to embark on a concert tour in the Deep South in 1962. In need of a driver and protection, Shirley recruits Tony Lip, a tough-talking bouncer from an Italian-American neighborhood.

Christian Bale is up for Best Actor because he played Dick Cheney in the movie Vice. The Bush-hating liberals will give him their vote.

This year’s Super Bowl had the shadow of racism hanging over it because of the failure to get Colin Kaepernick’s approval. He is the one who made a career out of protests at games by disgracing the playing of the National Anthem with his antics.

Because no NFL owner wanted this jerk on their team, the press is fighting a campaign to force the NFL to bow to Kaepernick’s demands. The so-called controversy has caused notable artists, including Rihanna, Pink, and Cardi B, to pass on the opportunity to perform at the Halftime Show.

Before music legend Gladys Knight sang the national anthem at the Super Bowl, Don Lemon – the dumbest person working at CNN – told her that another performer “basically lost her career” for singing at President Trump’s inauguration in January of 2017, and asked whether she was running the same risk.

Knight should have asked Lemon if he was making a personal threat. She calmly responded: “You know what? Nothing good comes easy… For me, it’s just for me about respect.”

I think the biggest problem with racism can be found in the Democratic ranks. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) — all new members of Congress — have all defended anti-Semites or espoused anti-Semitic positions over the last several months. What makes all of them more dangerous is that they believe they are the defenders of Equality. Anyone who calls them out as racists is racist in their eyes.

There are six million Jews in the U.S. Because Bible prophecy predicts that the Jewish people will be returning to the land of Israel, it is likely that America will become so hostile to Jews that they will decide to return to their homeland. It must be very near to that hour because we are in a time when few people care if you’re an anti-Semitic, but Lord help you if you are ever caught having once posed in blackface.

“Therefore say, Thus saith the Lord GOD; I will even gather you from the people, and assemble you out of the countries where ye have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel” (Ezekiel 11:17).

–Todd

End-Times Religious Rearrangements

Observers of the signs of the times that indicate the nearness of Christ’s Second Advent chronicle with ever-increasing interest the convergence of all the signals given for the end of the age. These look at the major areas of life upon this judgment-bound sphere. The areas include geopolitics, socioeconomics, geophysical occurrences, and developments in religion.

We consistently deal with what is going on in Israel and the Middle East. We look at the declining morality and economic upheavals, natural weather and earthquake disasters around the globe. Too often, however, I think we sometimes put on the back burner of prophetic discernment what is happening in the arena of religious apostasy. And, there is no area with greater emphasis placed on it by the Word of God than religion in discerning the times as the end of the Church Age approaches.

Bible prophecy foretells the coming of a worldwide religious system. It will be anti-God in every respect and likened to a harlot with whom the leaders of earthly kingdoms will consort. This evil will bring God’s ever-increasing judgment as He releases His wrath on an incorrigibly rebellious world of whom the KJV calls “earth dwellers.”

This prostitute-like religious system is described as follows:

And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will shew unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters: With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. (Revelation 17:1-5)

One of the great Bible prophecy scholars and writers of recent times, a person whom it was my great privilege to call a friend, wrote the following:

The great prostitute described in these verses is a portrayal of Apostate Christendom in the end time. When the Rapture occurred, all true believers were caught up to be with the Lord, but left behind were many thousands of those who made some profession of faith in Christ and claimed to be Christians who were not born again. These constituted the apostate Church which will dominate the scene politically and religiously up to the midpoint of that last seven years before the Second Coming.

The apostasy, called adultery and fornication here, of course refers to spiritual unfaithfulness, not to physical adultery. The church, devoid of any redeeming influence, is now completely united with the world, and, as the passage indicates, is working hand in glove with the political powers. (Dr. John F Walvoord, Every Prophecy in the Bible, Chariot Victor Publishing, 1999, pp. 604-607)

This harlot church system that will be in place during the Tribulation will, many prophecy students and teachers believe, be made up of an eclectic mix of religions in the time following the Rapture of the true Church. The religious system, called “Mystery Babylon,” will work in concert with the Antichrist regime to enslave the world in every realm of life.

With every day that passes, it becomes more obvious that the ecumenical movement among the religions of the world and the falling away within Christian church bodies from the sound, fundamental doctrines are quickly pushing the world toward this prophesied harlot system.

With the coming on the scene of Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church, the observance of the development of end-times religious apostasy must no longer remain on that back burner. His recent comments make clear that he breaks dramatically from Catholic doctrine. For certain, his declarations fly in the face of Christian doctrine found in God’s Word, the Bible.

This pope has declared that there are many ways to God, not just one, as Jesus Christ, Himself, said as recorded in John 14:6. He has said that all atheists will one day be in Heaven. He has declared that there is no Hell. This can all be seen as nothing less than heresy, apostasy in its most blatant form.

Once again the news blaring at this generation on a minute-by-minute basis shows the dynamic movement of this most relevant end-times prophecy.

Rearrangement of the religious landscape on a national basis is significant enough. Pastors are abandoning sound, doctrinal teaching. The Laodicean church of Revelation is more and more in view.

However, it is the dramatic development involving Pope Francis and his embrace of many religions that take front and center in the news. The story makes plain that the current movement into apostasy is a relevant sign of the times. The following report, in my estimation, demonstrates how quickly the entity that will become the harlot system of Revelation 17 is coming into view.

135,000 tickets have been issued for a historic mass with Pope Francis. The Pope is heading to the United Arab Emirates, the first papal visit to the Arabian peninsula. The February 3-5 visit will also highlight coexistence, religious freedom and interfaith relations as the Pope meets with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayebb. The UAE has declared 2019 the “year of tolerance,” bringing together different religions….

The centerpiece of the visit is a mass at Abu Dhabi’s Zayed Sports City on Tuesday. Initially expected to draw 120,000, it now appears to be including up to 135,000 according to the Vatican.

“I am happy for this occasion the Lord has given me to write on your dear land, a new page in the history of relations between religions,” the Pope said last week….

The UAE is hosting 600 religious leaders for an inter-faith conference that will also be part of the Pope’s itinerary…

The interfaith discussions also come in the wake of reports in December about a synagogue in Dubai which Bloomberg described as a rented village in a “quiet residential neighborhood” used for services. Rabbi Marc Schneier, who has played a formative role in Jewish outreach to the Gulf, told The Arabian Gazette in an interview published January 30 that he was in the UAE this week. “To start it is historic that Pope Francis is visiting Abu Dhabi and a true honor for me to be here for this and to represent the Jewish communities in the Gulf. This is not only an incredible fete for the UAE and the Vatican, but it marks a new era for interfaith relations.” (Seth J. Frantzman, “Pope Francis Headnig to UAE for Historic Meting with Religious Leaders and Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmed el-Tayebb part of UAE’s ‘year of tolerance’ supporting interfaith dialogue,” Jerusalem Post, February 2, 2019).

Like other last-of-the-end-of-the-age prophecies involving geopolitics, socioeconomics, and geophysical upheaval, the last-days apostasy is developing swiftly. Rearrangements that will usher in Antichrist and serve as his platform of control that will enslave Tribulation earth dwellers are all converging upon this generation.

Every day, I am reminded by those who send emails that Titus 2:13 is on the collective mind of those truly devoted to discerning the signs of the times: “Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.”